Olympic hopeful U.S. figure skater, Amber Glenn, poses for a photo at Team USA Media Summit on Oct. 28 in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
COY COVINGTON | Contributing Writer
CovingtonCoy@gmail.com
If you’re queer figure skater Amber Glenn, you’ve had a sweet ride these last two seasons.
Glenn, a Plano native, has won nearly every competition she’s entered these last two seasons, snagging some serious golden hardware along the way. She was crowned at the Lombardia Trophy, Grand Prix de France, Cup of China (twice), World Team Trophy, Nebelhorn Trophy, Grand Prix Final events. And, of course, the 2025-26 season is far from over.
Oops, I buried the lead!
Glenn is also the two-time and reigning U.S. Nationals champion. She’ll try to make that a three-peat at next week’s nationals’ competition in St. Louis.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Glenn.
After becoming the U.S. junior champion in 2014, her career stalled. She even quit the sport for a time. But the lure of the ice was too powerful, and she resumed training and competing but often playing the bridesmaid.
However, never doubt that Glenn is a fierce fighter. She continued skating, training and competing, year after year, and she became a fan favorite. The audience recognized her resolve, grit and dedication to the sport.
She also became known for her speed, depth of edges, athletic jumps, splendid spins and a silky, smooth glide across the ice.
And it doesn’t hurt that she often uses modern music and choreography. Her short program this season is skated to a lavish interpretation of Madonna’s queer anthem “Like a Prayer.” It kills.
The tale began to turn for Glenn when she came out to this reporter in Dallas Voice in 2019 — a story that went national and international in the skating world, making her the first openly gay women’s singles skater on Team USA. She didn’t think coming out as bisexual/pansexual would be a big deal, but the gays had a different spin on it.
“It blew up. It was everywhere, and I was like, ‘Oh my god! I haven’t even told my Catholic grandma yet!’” Glenn said to WomensHealthMag.com.
Soon after, at the next U.S. Championships, Pride flags began to pop-up around the arena. “I just started bawling,” Glenn said. “It meant so much to me. It was a moment I’ll never forget.”
Those Pride flags have now become ubiquitous at all of Glenn’s competitions and appearances.
“The stories I’ve been told that something I did, something I said, and being who I am publicly, unapologetically has helped (someone) feel better — that outweighs any sort of backlash or anything that could ever come negatively from me being who I am,” she told Carson Daly on The Today Show. “It’s one of the reasons why I kept skating even when I might not have been seeing the results I wanted.”
In 2022, having lived and trained in the Dallas area her entire life, Glenn wanted to spread her wings and try new things. She moved to Colorado to train with Damon Allen (happily, also queer) at the Colorado Springs Olympic & Paralympic Training Center, a world-class facility for Team USA. It was during this period that Glenn began consistently landing the fiendishly difficult triple axel. She is one of a very few American women to cleanly land the jump in international competition.
The rest is, well, kinda history.
Going for the three-peat
Making history is what’s up next on Glenn’s to-do list as she goes for the hat trick of her third consecutive National title next week in St. Louis. As such, she is on the precipice of becoming the first American woman to win three consecutive national titles since Michelle Kwan completed her run of eight straight titles in 2005. And, oh yeah, in winning she would most assuredly qualify herself for a spot in the upcoming February 2026 Olympic Games in Milano-Cortina, Italy.
But hold up. It’s not as simple as that. There are a few hoops to skate through to get to the Games.
First the International Skating Union (ISU) has some requirements: Each country must select their entries from among skaters who have achieved a minimum combined total technical elements score at an ISU-recognized international competition on or before Jan. 26, 2026, (which all of Team USA’s top skaters’ have already done).
Then United States Figure Skating, the national governing body for figure skating, will sidle up to the plate and make the final decisions. The U.S. has qualified three spots for the women, the most any country is allowed, to skate in Milano-Cortina. The upcoming U.S. Championships will serve as the final qualifying event prior to the selection of the U.S. Olympic team.
Conventional wisdom might suggest that the gold, silver and bronze winners at Nationals would automatically go to the Olympics. Nope.
It could turn out that way, but the choice of which skaters to send to the Games is at the discretion of USFS. They will consider the body of work each skater has displayed in addition to placements at Nationals.
As a two-time champion, Glenn, will have a leg-up on the competition. But Alysa Liu will certainly have something to say about that. Liu, herself a two-time national champion and the reigning world champion (ahem), has considerable cred coming into the race. And she has begun, once again, to land clean triple axels’ in practice.
Will she throw one at Nationals? Dunno. It’s one of the things that makes die-hard fans of the sport quiver with anticipation.
Arguably, it seems unlikely that either Glenn and Liu wouldn’t make the U.S. Team. But ice is slippery, and anything can happen. Other top contenders chasing those three precious spots are Bradie Tennell, another two-time national champion (2018, 2021) and 2023 Champion Isabeau Levito. It’s gonna be a bloodbath.
Can Amber Glenn, already a legend in the LGBTQ+ community, become the very first out, proud woman to skate for the USA at an Olympic Games? It’s heady stuff. But here she stands … on the brink of history.
Watch the 2026 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships from St. Louis. Coverage begins Jan. 7 on NBC and USA channels. Check local listing.
